Just a day after Her Majesty the Queen talked of the Established Church being ‘misunderstood’ and ‘commonly under-appreciated’, Trevor Phillips wades in with his assertion that Christians who seek exemptions from equality legislation are no different from Muslims who seek to subject us all to sharia law. The Chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is of the opinion that the Archbishop of York is no different from Abu Qatada; Westminster Cathedral breeds extremists just like Finsbury Park Mosque; and those who seek a conscience exemption over ‘gay marriage’ are no different from those who want to all homosexuals hanged or thrown off a cliff.

To seek to adhere to the teachings of St Paul on marriage is no different from Mohammed’s example of betrothal to a six or nine-year-old (whichever it was). The belief that women are better home-makers and child-rearers are akin to beating them and forcing them to wear a hijab. And the space which permits Roman Catholics not to perform abortions or dispense contraceptives is as cancerous to society as those Muslims who seek to establish a state-within-a-state and wage jihad against the filthy kuffar.

Trevor Phillips is foolishly stoking Christianophobia and inciting hatred. All in the name of equality, of course, so it is barely perceptible. The belief that religious rules should end ‘at the door of the temple’ and give way to the ‘public law’ laid down by Parliament is the assertion of the secularist. Britain is not a secular state, and it is not for some trumped-up chairman of an over-inflated quango to make it one. All gods are not equal in the pantheon, Mr Phillips; all religions are not equally conducive to the common good; all faith groups are not equally beneficial to society; all beliefs do not equally save.

When he says: “You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he is making an argument for churches, mosques and gurdwaras to be forced to accommodate ‘gay marriage’. To assert that Christians must choose between God’s law and that of the State is nothing new: but in the United Kingdom such conflicts have the benefit of the wisdom of centuries of evolved resolution: we have learned to live side by side; out of the ashes we reached a settlement between the spiritual and the temporal which is generous, tolerant and peaceable. The secular equality which Trevor Phillips seeks to impose is as intolerant as any totalitarian belief system: equality becomes the new metaphysical orthodoxy, the inviolable state religion from which there can be no accommodation of the recusant. He speaks as though this were Year 0 in the UK, and almost two millennia of Judaeo-Christian cultural influence is of no greater meaning, significance or worth than a few decades of agitating for Islamic sharia. He is ignorant of (or purposely ignores) the fons et origo of our understanding of equality and human rights, and the foundations of our liberal democracy. Our liberty did not stem from sharia, Mr Phillips, but the Protestant understanding and expression of the Christian faith. We didn’t always get it right, but the Anglican Settlement isn’t called a settlement for nothing. As Her Majesty said yesterday, ‘the Church of England has created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely. Woven into the fabric of this country, the Church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths’.

Could Trevor Phillips point to any nation on the planet where the Islamic sharia has ‘created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely’? Militant Muslims present more of a threat than crusading Christians. Except, perhaps, the crusading Christian who leads the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. If Baroness Warsi meant a word of what she said in the Vatican about ‘militant secularists’, she would sack him.